One of the things that I have been active in since I have been at Tennessee has been the annual research symposium.  The research symposium has been a great way to share and discuss research from faculty and students (PhD, Master’s, and Undergraduate) about issues and trends in Communications from various disciplines.  From Advertising to Public Relations to Journalism and Information Sciences – all had their place in the spotlight today at the 33rd Annual Research Symposium.

I do have fond memories of previous symposiums and can remember exactly where I was during each of those times.  I remember my first one was back in 2008 just as a 1st year doctoral student presenting my study that I did while in a Research Methods course at USC for my Master’s.  It was a good experience for me since this was my first ever research conference and poster session!  This poster also tied for being Best Poster – my first conference award, so I was very excited!  The next year was the first time that I presented a collaborative piece – and it was a study looking at undergraduate public relations programs from a PR research / practitioner perspective.  This was a fun study to be a part of and look into – and it was transformed into another paper for the following AEJMC Conference, where it was awarded 2nd Place in the PR Teaching Division.  Last year – I presented two papers and I remember the symposium since it was right after I finished my comprehensive exams.  Good times! 🙂


This year, I had the opportunity to work with two individuals from the School of Information Sciences (Monica Colon-Aguirre and Dr. Suzie Allard) on a project looking at the perceptions of Google Scholar among graduate students.  We conducted a pilot study looking at the perception of Google and Google Scholar, and we found some interesting findings. In addition, this was a great interdisciplinary project between public relations and information sciences – so this will be an interesting line of research to follow down the line and into the future.  Our poster tied for best at the symposium – which I thought was very fabulous!  Not only did we have handouts for our poster so people can review further on what we did in the study, but we also integrated QR Codes into the mix as well (what can I say – I think that emerging technology is fabulous!).  This is just another way that you can incorporate these into conference presentations – both professional and academic.

Overall, I had a wonderful experience at this year’s symposium – and would like to thank everyone that reviewed and judged the papers, and everyone in the college that helped support and organize this wonderful event.  Thank you to all of the faculty and students who came and supported all of the presenters at the conference – it was greatly appreciated! 🙂

Hope you all are having a wonderful day!

Best Wishes,

Karen


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